STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT PLAN
A GUIDE FOR OUR CONVERSATION
BACKGROUND
North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network (NWMPHN) is planning a 2-day conversation with people from various cultures about how to improve access to primary health care services.
What do we mean by ‘multicultural’?
Multicultural societies are made up of people of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities. They contain many communities with common cultures, languages or beliefs.
If you think of yourself as part of such a community you are welcome to express interest in taking part in this conversation, regardless of where you were born.
What do we mean by ‘primary health care’?
By ‘primary health care’ we mean services you might go to other than a hospital or specialist such as a surgeon or cancer expert.
The most common types of primary health care services include your local doctor’s clinic, pharmacies, community health centres, dentists, mental health, and drug and alcohol treatment centres, maternal and child health care, and allied health such as physiotherapists and psychologists.
What is North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network?
NWMPHN is a non-profit organisation that uses government funding to make it easier for people to get health care in Melbourne’s inner-city, northern and western suburbs. Visit the NWMPHN website to learn more and view a map of the region.
Everybody in our region needs safe and quality health care, regardless of where they were born, the language they speak, or to which communities they belong.
We’ve heard from many people that it can be hard to get primary health care. They tell us that costs for appointments are increasing, interpreters and language services are not always available, cultural values are sometimes misunderstood, and care may be a long way away from home.
So NWMPHN will host a ‘community panel’ over 2 days, in which 30 people from across the region will come together to:
talk about ways to make it easier for people from different communities to get primary health care
produce a set of recommendations for NWMPHN to consider when designing solutions for people from these communities.
NWMPHN will use the recommendations to develop a proposal for funding from the Australian Government to make it easier for people to get the primary health care they need.
If the proposal is successful, NWMPHN will work with more community members and organisations to create and deliver solutions.
SUCCESS OBJECTIVES
This community panel will produce:
recommendations for solutions that make it easier for all people to get the right primary health care.
ideas for a funding proposal to meet the needs of different communities in the NWMPHN region.
Participants will:
meet in a safe space in which their opinions and perspectives are heard, respected and considered.
clearly understand the purpose of the community panel, the pilot solutions and the funding proposal.
most importantly, contribute to improving primary health care services for people in the NWMPHN region.
WHAT WILL THE COMMUNITY PANEL DECIDE?
What can the community panel do?
Discuss the problems that our solution will try to fix.
Define the goals of our solution.
Decide what the solution might look like.
Suggest the types of primary health care jobs that could be funded and who might do them.
Recommend where the solution should be delivered.
Recommend who the solution is for – will it be for everyone in a community, or for specific people?
Plan how we should work with community members to deliver a solution if our funding proposal is successful.
What can’t the community panel do?
Change the ways in which established services work and are funded.
Suggest new infrastructure and buildings.
Change the criteria for getting care in health services. For example: some services require patients to meet specific criteria to receive things like surgery, or care from a psychiatrist.
Influence the amount of funding available to deliver proposed solutions.
Change government requirements for how funding can be used.
Change government and NWMPHN policies.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
NWMPHN has partnered with MosaicLab and Sortition Foundation to help co-design a funding proposal for a solution that improves access to primary health care for communities within our multicultural society.
These organisations will facilitate a community panel to produce a set of recommendations, which NWMPHN will use to write a funding proposal to be considered by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.
Should this proposal be successful, NWMPHN will work with community members, other organisations and stakeholders to develop and deliver the proposed solution.
PROMISES
We will work to ensure the community panel’s insights and aspirations are directly reflected in this project.
We will:
listen to what people say.
support participants to write their recommendations.
identify where participants’ recommendations can influence our work.
identify where we can’t incorporate a recommendation and clearly explain why.
provide progress updates during and after the community panel until the completion of the project.